A printing system well known in the art acquires status data from a printer indicating the status of the printer, and displays this status based on the acquired data on a display unit. By viewing this display, a user can determine the status of the printer, i.e., whether the printer is in a condition capable of printing the job, and can take appropriate measures when the printer is unable to execute the printing operation.
One such printing system is disclosed in Japanese patent application publication No. 2000-071582. This printing system reports the quantity of residual ink in the printer. Specifically, prior to printing print data, the printing system acquires a quantity of residual ink in the printer as status data. The printing system also estimates the quantity of ink necessary for executing a printing operation based on the print data and displays the estimated quantity of ink together with the quantity of residual ink in a graph on the display unit. Accordingly, if there is insufficient ink for executing the printing operation based on the print data, for example, the printing system described in Japanese patent application publication No. 2000-071582 can notify the user prior to printing the print data that the operation cannot be executed until ink is replenished.